Medieval or Ultra-Modern: The Anti-Modern Church of the 1920’s

Last updated on: June 17, 2019 at 10:50 am By Jack Hartjes

Part 3 in the series on Catholic Modern by James Chappel –Chapter One, Catholic Anti-modernism, 1920-1929 In the 1920’s Church was intellectually anti-modern in just about all its respects of that worldview. It rejected the separation of church and state, the capitalist economies, liberal democracy, the value of other religious confessions, and even the modern idea of the nation-state. Practically, many in the Church got along with all of these, even in multi-religious settings. But there was no “coherent and widely espoused language... Read more

Catholic Modernism, the Legacy of the 1930’s

Last updated on: June 17, 2019 at 10:50 am By Jack Hartjes

A modern Church emerged in the 1930’s, earlier, James Chappel holds, than often thought. Disagreements about over the form Catholic modernism should take marked the Church’s engagement with the world then and probably always will. Part 2 in the series on Catholic Modern: The Challenge of Totalitarianism and the Remaking of the Church by James Chappel – the Introduction The Catholic Church “has embraced modernism.” (p. 1) And she embraced it for good in the period between the two world wars. That doesn’t mean that... Read more

The Modern World in the Catholic Church

Last updated on: June 17, 2019 at 10:50 am By Jack Hartjes

A First Look at Catholic Modern by James Chappel I have been reading and writing about the Catholic Church during the years Augosto Pinochet was dictatorial ruler of Chile. The reading was from William T. Cavanaugh’s 1998 book Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ. That has led me to further exploration of church-state relations for two reasons. I wanted another take that was not tied into a specific country and such an extreme situation as Pinochet’s Chile. And I wanted to get another look at the... Read more

Memorial Day and the Liturgies of a small town in Rural Minnesota

Last updated on: May 27, 2019 at 2:29 pm By Jack Hartjes

I don’t know what it’s like in your town, but in my town in rural Southern Minnesota, there’s less than theoretically pure separation of religion and the public realm. That separation, better, relationship, has been a theme in most of my posts for a while. But now’s Memorial Day, and a time for celebrating. If that celebrating includes praying outside of church, well, it’s not a time for worrying about political fine points. Does everybody in town pray? Do they... Read more

The Eucharistic Imagination – Too Big for a Private Space

Last updated on: April 15, 2023 at 6:40 am By Jack Hartjes

In Chile, Cavanaugh says, “It should come as no surprise that reception of the Eucharist increased dramatically among the poor during the military dictatorship.” (p. 268) The regime had claimed the whole of public space for itself. For a time the Church thought it could operate freely in what was left—the private space of individual hearts and souls. But celebrating Eucharist, i.e. “going to church,” is a public act and, for many, the only public act available. Concluding the series on Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and... Read more

Performing the Body of Christ against Torture in Chile

Last updated on: April 15, 2023 at 6:41 am By Jack Hartjes

The Church in Chile had confined itself to matters of the soul and the spirit as the Pinochet regime took increasingly brutal control of the country. Eventually the Church emerged from those restrictions and became an effective, true Body of Christ in opposition to the regime and solidarity with the people. In three sections of a final chapter Cavanaugh presents three ways that the Church in Chile learned to respond to torture. One, the bishops exercised their power of excommunication.... Read more

The Mystical Body and the True Body of Christ

Last updated on: April 15, 2023 at 6:42 am By Jack Hartjes

One of my favorite images of the Church, from before the Second Vatican Council, is the Mystical Body of Christ. I was disappointed when the Second Vatican Council put People of God instead of Mystical Body in first place among its many images. But Church as Mystical Body gets some rough treatment in Cavanaugh’s fifth chapter. The Church, Cavanaugh says, is not a mystical presence behind the bodies in the real world. It is a bodily presence in that world, the True Body of Christ. On... Read more

A New Christendom Fails to Challenge the State

Last updated on: April 22, 2023 at 7:52 am By Jack Hartjes

My last post on Chapter Three of Torture and Eucharist saw William Cavanaugh’s exposition and critique of Catholic Action. This was the early- and mid-20th-century response of the Church to new, secular, social and political realities. It grew out of a vision of the Church as a New Christendom. In the former Christendom the Church had wielded more secular power than modern states could tolerate. Catholic theologians, like Jacques Maritain, whom I knew as a leading voice in the pre-Vatican II Church, laid the theoretical foundations for this New Christendom.... Read more